Jordan Stolz Ends Memorable Olympic Year With World Sprint Silver And Fourth-Place Allround Finish

Two-time Olympic champion Jordan Stolz followed up his memorable performance in Milano Cortina with a grueling weekend of competition that saw him place second in the Men’s Sprint and fourth in the Men’s Allround at the ISU Speed Skating World Championships in Heerenveen, Netherlands.

Stolz, who reached the podium in all four Men’s Sprint races, clinched a Sprint medal for the first time in his decorated career. The performance comes at the end of a season in which he also won three World Cup titles and less than three weeks after he won Olympic Gold medals in the Men’s 500m and 1000m and an Olympic Silver medal in the 1500m.

In the World Sprint Championships, skaters races over 500m and 1000m twice, with times being converted to points that accumulate to determine the winners. The Allround scoring is similar, except skaters race four different distances.

In the Sprints, Stolz finished as runner-up to Dutch rival Jenning de Boo in each of the first three races before winning the final 1000m. De Boo won the Sprint title for the first time in his career.

Stolz said he was satisfied with the performance in Heerenveen after peaking for the Olympics.

“It just wasn’t the best leading up to here,” he said. “De Boo had a really good prep for some reason, so it worked out well for him.”

Stolz also took part in the Allround competition, for which he’s the reigning World Champion. Since the Allround and Sprint competitions were combined into a single World Championships in 2020, no skater has completed both until Stolz.

And he nearly pulled off another medal. Stolz won the 500m by nearby two seconds, then finished 11th in the 5000m before winning the 1500m. Going into the grueling final 10000m, Stolz still had a chance to win but finished eighth and dropped to fourth in the final standings. Sander Eitrem of Norway won his first Allround World Title.

“After that 1500m, I was pretty dead,” Stolz said, “but I was still believing that I could maybe skate a good 10000m. But I was more tired than I thought. I was dead.”

Over four days, Stolz competed in eight races covering 20,000m.

“Doing the Sprints and the Allrounds, hats off to him,” Eitrem said. “He’s a crazy guy and I have all respect.”

Stolz’s Olympic teammates Cooper McLeod and Conor McDermott-Mostowy competed in the Men’s Sprints, and Casey Dawson skated in the Allround.

McLeod’s top finishes were 13th in the second 500m race and 15th in the second 1000m race. He placed 14th overall. McDermott-Mostowy, whose best finish was 20th in the second 1000m race, placed 22nd overall.

Dawson posted an eighth-place finish in the 5000m, three spots ahead of Stolz, and ended 22nd in the Allround standings.

Sarah Warren placed 21st in the Women’s Sprint competition, highlighted by a 19th-place finish in the second 1000m race. Erin Jackson started with a seventh-place finish in the 500m and then tied for 21st place in the first 1000m race, but she withdrew after that.

Femke Kok of the Netherlands won all four Sprints races to win the Women’s Sprint title. Ragne Wiklund of Noway won the Women’s Allround.

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USSpeedskating.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.